


Two of us in a single room, alone.

by Dark_Ruby_Regalia



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: 30/32 ignoct, Existential between the cracks, Hints of nsfw but nothing explicit, Love Confessions, M/M, Noctis Lives, Post-Episode Ignis Verse 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-05
Updated: 2019-01-05
Packaged: 2019-10-04 17:38:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,697
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17308952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dark_Ruby_Regalia/pseuds/Dark_Ruby_Regalia
Summary: Short weeks after dawn is restored, Noctis is still struggling to adjust to his own return. Ignis keeps him company one evening, and they find themselves confronting what seems long past, but is not long gone :)A collision of hearts that shared the same track, destined for this moment, but hard held back.





	Two of us in a single room, alone.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [loveiscosmicsin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/loveiscosmicsin/gifts).



A knock arrived at his chamber door.

Noctis roused from his crumple on the couch, sitting up and taking a breath to begin. Before he stood, a voice called to him from the other side.

“Your Majesty?” It was Ignis. Referring to him by title. Doing his job, checking on the King, wondering why he’d left the celebration early. Noctis almost resented the formal address; hated the need for any barrier, even as he realised he’d created one now, retreating unnoticed into his rooms to find some time and space alone. But Ignis was different. This retreat didn’t apply to him. The formality could go.

“Come in, Iggy,” he answered, and knew he’d been heard by the jangling of keys that followed. The door creaked open on hinges still unaccustomed to use, then creaked back to latch. The two of them in a single room, alone. A moment all too rare in the chaos of rebuilding.

“Majesty, I-”

“Please, Iggy. No ‘Majesty’ tonight.”

Ignis paused in speech and in his movement across the room. For him, a symbolic transition of roles. He was always cautious with the informal ever since Noctis had returned a few short weeks ago. Noctis felt that uncertainty tarnish their moments together. He hoped, with a bit of effort, he could polish it away.

“No lights tonight?” Ignis said instead, commenting on the dim-lit room. A solitary candle flickered in the corner. Electricity had been restored, in part, with Noctis’ chambers considered a priority by everybody but Noctis himself. Retrofit wiring tangled down corridors, was thread through holes, stapled to walls. Temporary measures; hierarchy tracked by resource. Noctis still preferred to leave the lights out. “I can’t believe we fought so hard to restore the dawn just to have you sit alone in the dark.”

There was humour in the words. After ten years of absence, Noctis’ was relieved to still find Ignis _funny_ , even if it came out a little warped like this. A little too near the truth.

“There’s just-” and Noctis tried to find words for something he’d not articulated yet, nor been asked about. The contrast of presence; the shock of living. He didn’t quite get there. “You can turn the lights on,” he said instead, for the sake of saying anything at all.

But Ignis didn’t turn them on. He crossed the room to stand at Noctis’ feet, a shadow of concern behind his bright eyes. _Gods_ , Noctis thought. _He is impossibly beautiful_ , though the defining edge of _impossible_ had certainly been shifted of late. 

“Noct,” he said - and there it was, that achingly familiar inflection, smooth and round and warmed by fondness - “I wanted to check you were alright. Guests have noticed your absence.”

Noct smiled. “I’m fine. I really am. Just overwhelmed by… _everything_.” He waved a hand through the air to emphasise.

“Ah,” Ignis said, understanding. “Let me leave you to your space.” Not a shred of judgement nor offense; he simply bowed his head in acknowledgement, and turned to leave out of respect. 

Noct stood up. “Please don’t.”

“Noct?”

“Can you stay?”

Ignis hovered by the door. “I can, but it’s really alright. If you need-”

“I’d like you to stay. If _you’d_ like to, that is?”

Ignis’ barely whispered _yes_ was a spark of life in the room. He slipped his shoes off by the door and shrugged out of his jacket, draping it across a chair beside Noct’s. The sight of it - of this incidental coexistence - brought back ghosts of memory from _before_ , when they shared spaces so often their owned edges were a blur; when Ignis had a favourite mug in the kitchen cupboard and had his own hook on the back of Noct’s door. How could that ever feel such an eternity past. 

Ten years of ruin were not kind to this part of the Citadel; the cold refused to leave its bones. Plasterwork crumbled to make scars of the cracked walls, and damp had seeped into every room, destroying anything of fabric and fibre. The scourge was a stain left behind in corners, as though ink had pooled in the cracks and fissures, indelible. The entire building had to be stripped bare. These rooms of Noct’s were no exception: the carpet was gone with no means to replace it; the walls were a patchwork of flaked paint. The woodwork had weathered and the door jambs warped. Glass, at least, had been taken from other rooms to create one complete window, though it served no purpose tonight but to reflect the solitary flame as it flickered on its wick. Only darkness beyond. 

Noctis made his way to it now, looking out through the endless nothing. In contrast to the warmth that fluttered his heart to find Ignis standing close beside him, that cold chasm beyond the window was somehow a comfort to him too. In the absence of anything tangible he could recall his timeless drift through the aether. Here there was a dormant city spread out unknown beyond the panes of glass; in the crystal there was a peripheral _knowing_ that the space was shared by _something else_. Some other soul, some other entity, buoying him, sharing wisdoms he had not the language nor the capacity to fully understand… He shivered to remember it.

Ignis’ reaction was immediate. In three strides he’d retrieved the thin blanket from the couch, returning to offer it to Noctis. “Cold?” he asked, though he’d already taken action against any answer.

“It’s not that,” Noctis said, though he took the blanket anyway and draped it about his shoulders. The cocoon was a comfort, and the tassels that tickled at his arms below rolled-up sleeves felt good to him. These sensations of touch were still so fresh; some - like this - a lovely surprise. “I’m… it’s…”

Ignis’ patience harboured no expectation.

“I’m still getting used to… existing,” Noctis said with a laugh that was part awareness of how absurd that was, and part apology for it. “Everything is _so much_.”

“Too much?”

“Yeah. Not always, but often. It’s getting better, but much more slowly than I’d hoped.”

“There’s no rush, Noct.”

“I know, but-”

“Everyone spent ten years learning to do for themselves. They don’t need so much of you that you can’t look after yourself.”

“They don’t need me at all, really.”

“But they want you. And they need you as their symbol.”

Noctis fell to contemplating this. He felt his _own_ wants clouding his thoughts on Ignis’ objective viewpoint. He’d been silent about them for far too long.

“What about you, Iggy?” he asked, a waver betraying his vulnerability.

“Noct?”

“Do _you_ need me?” his voice barely had enough breath to carry it through the room, yet Ignis heard every word. Gravity shifted; just the two of them in a single room, alone, with walls closing in…

“Noct, I…” Ignis looked down at his fidgeting hands, then up at the weather-eaten cornice. He filled his lungs as fortitude. “More than anything, yes. I do.”

Noctis’ heart hammered fast in his chest. “Do you remember-”

“Yes.”

“I still feel-”

“As do I.”

Noctis reached out to still Ignis’ hands with his own, to make space to finish his sentence. “I still feel you on my lips.”

“Not a day passes that I don’t relive that night.” Ignis turned on Noctis, eyes glistening. 

They’d made love once, somewhere between Insomnia falling and Noctis stepping into the crystal. It had been desperate and wild, a blur of confession and spilled emotions offered and returned and wept over. A fever of hands spread across skin, bodies expressing what words could not. They’d been naked in each others’ arms, covered in the overflow, breathing against each others’ necks as though they’d never known air until that moment. They fell asleep to their combined heartbeat and the lap of water at the base of canal walls, only to wake the next morning to a nightmare that had destiny tear them apart. 

Now, a decade later, they faced each other over a gulf of uncertainty, afraid of how much had been lost to the merciless passage of time. In a world rendered unrecognisable, they dared not hope to find this one thing - this shared, precious sentiment - unchanged. But it was.

Noctis let go Ignis’ hands to slip his full along Ignis’ cheeks, the stroke of his thumbs a profoundly inadequate expression of reverence. Ignis returned his gaze until Noctis drew closer. Then he closed his eyes and succumbed to the cradle of Noctis’ palm, giving himself entirely to that point of contact. Any residual caution soon melted to nothing as he made blindly to return the touch: a faltering skim of fingertips across the planes of Noct’s face; tracing the resolve in his jawline, the wisdom in his brow; finally making his way to the curl of lip at the corner of his soft smile. In that, Noctis found the invitation to kiss him. He leaned up through the small space that still separated them, bringing their lips together. 

This kiss could not be more different to their first. It was hesitant with disbelief, heavy with meaning. A brush of lips and held breath. They paused at the threshold before passing through, discovering each other was waiting for it, warm and welcome and wanting. From there they sunk into each other without hesitation, determined never to resurface. 

They woke late the following morning, pressed into the shape of each other. Noct felt the lazy caress of fingers travelling up and down his back and realised Ignis had been awake quite a while before him, but hadn’t moved. He sheepishly propped himself on an elbow to press a shy good morning to Ignis’ neck. 

“You let me sleep too long,” he said, watching as Ignis smiled before opening his eyes.

“And yet the world still turns.” Ignis once again made light work of the truth. He brushed the loose, long strands of Noctis’ hair back behind his ears. “I must admit to being selfish by not waking you. Last time…”

Noctis silenced him with a kiss of understanding. Eos had waited ten years for him to return; it could give another day.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for your prompts, loveiscosmicsin! 30s IgNoct are so very dear to my heart; it was a joy to dwell on them with you in mind, pining for each other over distance and time, finally finding the space to confess in the turmoil of what came _before_ and what comes _next_. I hope you enjoy them in this moment as much as I enjoyed writing it ❤


End file.
